Posted on 08/12/2005 11:09:12 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Ever since the mad, mad real estate market has become fuel for our twisted cultural id, we've been feeding on the nightmarish stories: dreams of homeownership dashed, greed leveraged to an art form, inane domestic luxuries reinvented as necessities.
But sometimes you hear a story so free from real estate's unseemly underbelly that it sounds like a fairy tale.
Until a couple of years ago, Carole and Jamey Moore were a poster family for how San Francisco was driving out young families. They had thriving alternative careers (as massage therapists and artists), a rich community of friends and a rental situation that wasn't working with their newborn son.
By 2003, they were fast approaching that ugly crossroads: giving up on ever owning a home in order to stay in San Francisco, or moving away from their friends to find affordable homeownership.
"We had been trying to buy a home for about nine years," explained Carole, who met me on the scrap of land atop Bernal Hill where they will build their green dream home. "I mean actively looking -- we went through real estate agents -- oh, our poor mortgage broker, what they went through!" She rolls her eyes. "We got close a couple of times, but we never got a place."
Because the couple were self-employed and no family members agreed to co- sign, they repeatedly failed to get a loan when prices were low. Then, as the lenders loosened their criteria about self-employment income, the prices shot out of reach.
When their son was born, the search for a permanent home became urgent. They took a trip to Portland to go house-shopping. Upon returning to San Francisco, they began telling their friends that they were on the verge of packing their bags. One of them suggested another solution.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I don't understand what it is she is doing. Is she going in on the Lease-Own Deal to eventually get a piece of the appreciation when the Lease portion of the deal is over with?
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